Journal of Middle Eastern Politics & Policy

Oya Dursun-Özkanca examines the post-2019 developments in Turkey-West relations and argues that there is increasing use of boundary-breaking intra-alliance opposition process, creating a dangerous path dependency.

Ghazi Ghazi sits down with Sally Bachori, one of the founding members of Ending Impunity in Iraq to learn more about the organization and their grassroots movement.

In the judicial construction of contracts, ambiguities are construed against the drafter based on the canon of “Ambiguitas contra stipulatorem est.” On July 25th, 2021, the Tunisian president Kais Saied imported this technique to constitutional law by dismissing the Prime Minister (PM) and suspending the parliament chaired by “Rachid AL Ghannouchi,” the head of Ennahda […]

Over the past weeks and months, numerous think tanks and individuals have published reports and briefs on the looming humanitarian crisis in northwest Syria. [[1]] This déjà vu moment has not been lost on actors and agencies focused on aid in Syria. In mere weeks, the last remaining entry-point for humanitarian aid into northwest Syria […]

Interview with Jay (Jihad) Abdo. Photo credits to Fadia Afashe. On 24 October 2020 Syrian-American Hollywood actor Jay (Jihad) Abdo cast his vote for the first time ever in a presidential election. He and his wife Fadia Afashe, a lawyer and visual artist, were never allowed to participate in free elections before or even have […]

Dilan Okcuoglu’s “Informal Control of the Turkish State: Lived Experiences from Kurdish Borderlands” is part of JMEPP’s upcoming Spring 2021 edition, Beyond Borders: Middle East in Empire, Diaspora, and Global Transitions. The full edition is expected to come out on April 30, 2021. “In 2009, we planted our wheat in front of Turkish soldiers; they […]

The morning of Saturday, April 3rd, reports of an alleged national security threat targeted at the reigning Jordanian monarch, King Abdullah II, by his younger half-brother, Prince Hamzah, were headlining news sources across the world. Recently, Prince Hamzah has been publicly critical of King Abdullah II’s rule during the COVID-19 public health crisis.  In a […]

JMEPP’s 21st edition, Middle East Beyond Borders: Empire, Diaspora, and Global Transitions for spring 2021 offers its first preview of the edition with an article by Harvard alum Oula A. Alrifai, of Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, herself a Syrian and scholar of regional developments regarding Syria. Here she commemorates a decade of dictatorship and terror in Syria […]

Photo: President-elect Joe Biden speaking at Harvard Kennedy School in 2014. Photo credit: AP   Michael Johns was joined by Dr. Daniel Pipes to discuss the future of United States foreign policy in the Middle East under the Biden administration. Dr. Pipes holds both an A.B. and a Ph.D. from Harvard University, and taught at the […]

Lubana Al Quntar is a rare talent that, if given the proper support, has the power to uplift her entire nation, putting Syria, and the Arab World, on the map of classical opera globally. Yet, in Assad’s Syria talents like hers are systematically eliminated.

On July 10, 2020, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed an order which would allow the disintegration of Hagia Sophia’s museum status and turn it back into a mosque. Pro-government Turkish news outlet Yeni Şafak  headlined the same day: “The West Goes Mad.” (Batı çıldırıyor) [1]  With the signature of the Council of State’s memorandum […]

Syrians believe in the American ideals of liberty, the right to peaceful assembly, equality and the pursuit of happiness, that are now echoing across the American cities.